Each human being is a living example of production and destruction.  Each generation repeats the affirmation, modifying it little or much in accord with circumstances.

Modification means purposeful change—­partially or wholly abandoning the old and replacing it with something new.  In the course of these changes the conservative elements in man and in society, voluntarily or under coercion, give up the old and learn how to use the new.  The learning process is always more or less painful, especially to people past middle age.

The world-wide revolution resulted from a long-continued related series of affirmations, punctuated and interrupted by contradictions and conflicts.

Trends inherent in the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970 suggest a cycle that reached its high point at the turn of the century and began its downward course around 1900.  The chief European empires were jointly and severally involved in the bitter struggle for survival and supremacy from 1870 onward.  Until the outbreak of war in 1914, events followed an irregular course marked by the shifting relationships of Italy and the increased pressure from Germany for a showdown.  The showdown was the war of 1914-18, continued in a second phase from 1936 to 1945.

Immediate political results of the showdown were victory for one side and defeat for the other side.  Economic, sociological and ideological consequences were profound and far reaching.  We noted some of them in the previous chapter.

UNESCO’s History of Mankind devotes its final volume six to the twentieth century.  The authors note that the chief European powers emerged from the general war of 1914-18 “weakened in every way:  in men and wealth, in the balance of their economies and the stability of their political structure and above all in their relation to other powers rising or beginning to rise in other parts of the world”. (Vol.  VI p. 10.)

Aside from the victory-defeat relationship which led to political realignments during the post-war years, the essence of the experience is to be found in the UNESCO phrase “weakened in every way”.  Another way of describing the experience is to state that the participants in this four year blood bath were “bled white.”

It is easy to be specific.  In the course of the war sixty million people were mobilized.  Most of these people stopped what they had been doing until mid-summer of 1914 and began an entirely new line of activity.  Up to that point most of them had been living with their families, in their neighborhoods, going through a daily routine that included household cares, production or service work, the conduct of neighborhood affairs, the maintenance of normal livelihood activities, the upbringing of the new generation and perhaps most important of all, adaptation to a rapidly changing social situation.